Tokens, such as gambling chips and coins, are commonly exposed to numerous germs, viruses, dirt, and filthy surfaces as they are passed from hand to hand. These tokens may then transmit these germs, viruses, and dirt to people handling them, causing sickness or even death.
Despite the dangers of handling dirty tokens, they are rarely cleaned. Coins are typically transferred so quickly that there is very little incentive for a person to clean the coins themselves, and banks handle the coins only rarely. In casinos, where gambling chips are used, they must be closely accounted for and kept on the main casino floor as much as possible. Frequently, taking large quantities of chips out of circulation in order to clean them is simply not an option.
Some systems have been developed to address these needs. In one system, tokens are dumped into a bin and hand-scrubbed. This method is time consuming and does not tend to clean the indentations and ridges of the tokens thoroughly. In another system, the tokens are dumped into a dishwasher-like machine, but each cycle may be time consuming and tokens that overlap within the machine may not be adequately cleaned.
In yet another system, tokens are dumped as a unit into various baths and an air-knife drying station, and are subjected to ultrasonic cleaning while submerged in these baths. Although a robotic arm may spin the tokens, the areas between the tokens may still be left unclean. Further, the tokens must be moved between multiple baths, and then to a separate drying station containing compressed air. This may render the system inefficient and cumbersome.
In still yet another system, tokens are inserted one-by-one through a chip washing machine via crennallated recesses in a chip wheel. Washing fluid and an air stream flow through the crennallations located at various washing and drying segments within the washing machine. Like the above-mentioned systems, however, cleaning of the tokens may be limited, and the machine may be inefficient and cumbersome.
Still other systems have been provided that attempt, through complex networks of conveyer belts, rollers, etc. to separate the tokens and clean them individually. They, however, suffer from similar problems as the systems discussed above.